1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic message systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to methods, systems, and computer program products for reducing unsolicited messages in an electronic message system.
2. Background and Related Art
Unsolicited electronic messages, also known as spam, are a significant problem for users of electronic message systems, such as electronic mail systems. Whether in a personal or a business context, spam consumes both computing and human resources. For some systems, spam may account for anywhere from one-third to one-half of all email traffic, and in extreme cases, spam may be responsible for 80% of email traffic or more. Although the cost in computing resources is significant, the amount of time users waste in reviewing and deleting spam can represent an unacceptable drain on productivity or leisure time.
The problems caused by spam have lead to reluctance on the part of users to disclose their email addresses in many circumstances, such as on a web site or in publications. Once an address is disclosed, it can be discovered by web crawlers initiated by spammers (i.e., those who send spam) and distributed to email marketers. Much like telemarketing, spam is viewed by many as intrusive and undesirable. Users are then forced to sift through massive amounts of irrelevant spam and/or deploy expensive tools and resources to eliminate as much spam as possible.
Email aliasing is a widely understood method that email users employ to protect their primary or actual email address. An email alias is a public identity (other than the primary address) for a user. The alias can take any form, but usually has some relationship to the primary address. For example, “firstinitial.lastname@company.com” may be used as an alias for a user's primary address “firstname.lastname@company.com” which the user ordinarily does not disclose or only discloses to trusted parties. Users with no control over their email server may achieve the same result by creating multiple email accounts on public domain web servers (hotmail, yahoo, etc.) to keep their primary email address from being discovered by spammers. Some users may have separate email accounts for friends, family, business, and for submitting to web sites. If an alias or address becomes overloaded with spam, the user simply chooses another alias or address, but usually retains the same primary address.
These simple addressing schemes solve a few problems for a short period of time, but they create larger problems of manageability and usability. Eventually they are no better in reducing spam than using just one address, and they introduce new problems. If an address or alias is given to multiple parties, and some of the parties are untrusted, the entire address or alias is prone to spam. These addresses or aliases are hard to delete because subscriptions to web sites and the user's contacts must be updated. It is worth noting that in using multiple addresses and aliasing, the responsibility of keeping an address spam-proof lies with parties other than the user.
Aliasing may present further problems when emailing multiple groups of people. For example, if a sender has two aliases, one each for family and friends, it hard to choose the appropriate alias when sending an email to recipients who are both family and friends. Perhaps a new “friends and family” alias could be created, but at some point the combinations of groups becomes too large to manage. This problem may be compounded if a temporary alias is created for a specific email or series of emails. Recipients may interpret the new alias as an updated email address and add the temporary alias to their address book.
Another problem with multiple addresses or aliases is that once an address or alias has been disabled (perhaps because it was compromised) the user can no longer be contacted. This represents a serious problem for those who publish their email address in some way, such as on business cards, letterhead, in articles, to business partners, etc. Once the address is disabled, no further contact can occur. Accordingly, methods, systems, and computer program products that reduce unsolicited electronic messages, but allow permanent or long-term identities to exist, are desired.